Phillip L. Scheldt – Rants and Raves and……..

Month: October 2013

Yesterday there was a piece in the “New York Times” lamenting the write for free mentality of the Internet. The truth is there are two classes, those who get paid and those who don’t. And those who do would never work for free, they’re professionals. YOU ARE GOING TO PAY!

I’m not saying people won’t give away their wares for free online in the future.

I’m just saying this whining that you can’t make any money, that everyone expects everything to be free online…those days are just about through. Sure, you can read posts free on Facebook and Twitter, but those sites were built on the public’s back. And they’ve peaked too.

How do I know?

Because I didn’t post a photo last night because I knew nobody was inter

ested. At least not enough to make the effort.

You see the Net has been built on cool. It’s been about the new new thing. But those days are through, it’s solidifying. Now we’ve got winners and losers, and the odds of going from the underclass to the ruling class online are about similar to those doing the same thing in real life, essentially nil. Yes, the American Dream is dying online too. A few people make it through, but it’s like winning the lottery, the odds are low.

Prior to the Internet, did you sit at home watching television saying I CAN DO THAT?

Maybe, but you rarely took action. Video-cams have been around since the late seventies, they were cheap in the eighties, was MTV inundated with home made tapes? Of course not, especially when videos became slick, expensive productions in the late eighties and nineties.

We’ve been sold a fiction. That the Internet has leveled the playing field. That all are welcome and respected. Hell, you can’t even get people to read your tweets, what makes you think you can get them to watch your YouTube clips?

YOU ARE GOING TO PAY!….Oh… you want Yahoo?, You want AOL?, you want Google?……… Lik

A Flash Mob with the participation of 100 people from the Vallès Symphony Orchestra, the Lieder, Amics de l’Òpera and Coral Belles Arts choirs celebrates On the 130th anniversary of the founding of Banco Sabadell.

Yes, the world has been flattened. Everybody’s equal. And if you act differently, you’re going to get mowed down.

If you’re in the public eye, humility is key. It’s the essence of Howard Stern’s success. He could go on about how wealthy he is, how he doesn’t fly commercial, but instead he focuses on his foibles, bringing his audience ever closer to him, cementing a bond that cannot be broken.

We’re immune to so much hype and me-tooism because we’ve all tried it ourselves and found out it doesn’t work, that fame online is earned over time, based on the work, which explains why everything that pops up on YouTube seems to die quickly and is never followed up, we view it not as the start of a career, but a wreck on the side of the highway to rubberneck at and then forget.

But the final link was the mobile phone. Because suddenly we can take our world with us. BlackBerry didn’t realize this and died. It’s not solely about e-mail, we want EVERYTHING at our fingertips, we never want to encounter a technical glitch, to have a problem with your mobile phone is akin to having a problem with your body, something that is completely untenable.

And it’s only going to become more so. We’re all connected, we’re all primary, and it all happens on the mobile.

I went to a show and it took all my willpower to refrain from dipping into my pocket and checking my Phone.
An e-mail would be nice, or a text, but in my fingertips I hold a personal link to the entire world, and this has changed not only my behavior, but that of the entire globe.
We used to put stars on a pedestal. Now they’re vehicles for put-downs. If you’re famous, you’ve been abused online, it goes with the territory.
And if you’re having a “digital free” day enjoy the analog to camping but there’s nothing wrong the new paradigm and it’s never going away, it’s only going to intensify.
We were never at the heart of the action. In fact, we had to leave home to participate. Now we can not only watch TV in our lairs, we can surf for dates and dig deep down into our personal interests, chatting with those like-minded all the while. When I went to college with my hundreds of albums in the seventies I was an outcast.

It’s already happened. People won’t leave their house without their device. Forget the baby boomer backlash, decrying the loss of… Actually, it’s a gain. Everybody you ever knew is at your fingertips. You’re more socially engaged than ever before. You can buy goods at the lowest possible price. Virtual connection is a panacea that brings whole nations together and fosters revolutions, and this is good.
In other words, expect people to continue to take photos at the gig. To dial their friends and have them listen in. To check their timeline or feed while the music plays. Because what’s happening in your world is more important than what’s happening on stage. As Sly Stone sang decades ago, everybody is a star.

That’s what’s wrong with today’s marketing, it doesn’t allow for percolation, it doesn’t allow for growth, it believes the instant smash is more powerful than the long term build, that if everybody knows your name right away you’ve made it, when just the opposite is true. HYPE

They call it the NEWSpaper. And if there’s no news, they don’t write about it. And the web is even worse, some stories don’t even last a day. They want the now. HYPE

Let’s look at the Video Music Awards. But I dare you to name last year’s winners. Hell, I dare you to name this summer’s blockbuster movies. Both were the beneficiaries of hype.

Then there’s that story in the “New York Times,” saying YouTube/Internet is the new MTV. Yeah, if you want to have a momentary hit. But last summer’s “stars” are already done, and if you believe Carly Rae Jepsen and PSY are coming back you’re making Eggs Benedict with year-old English muffins. OLD HYPE

How did we get here? HYPE

The money. That’s the ultimate arbiter today, how much you’ve got – HYPE